X-treme times: the left is radicalising the right ...

Hands off my culture!

Yesterday anti gay-marriage protestors in Paris took a leaf out of the feminists' book, and whipped their shirts off for the day. The FEMEN have been getting a name for themselves recently, more often than not protesting against the Church. And so now the HOMMEN are on the rampage. Bare-chested and wearing colourful trousers they could pass for their own opponents in this politcal debate, except that they don't have the tanned, waxed and polished look one has come to associate with homosexuals. Apparently a few of them are homosexuals though; it's just that they don't believe that society should ditch the concept of one mummy and daddy make one baby.
But now the government has rushed the bill through the Senate, cut down parliamentary debate time, and will ensure no doubt that it becomes law before Christmas.

So what will these young men do now? They are being disenfranchised. They are the kind of young men I know very well: from conservative Catholic families, a hankering for the Ancien Régime, and a strong sense of national pride. Increasingly they are left without hope and without a voice, living in a country they no longer recognise as the one they were born in: for François Hollande, in his New Year speech, the unique vocation of France and the key to her identity, is to engage in progressive social reform. Nothing to do with high culture, art, music, gothic cathedrals, haute cuisine, a sense of style and occasion ... no, it's all down to legislation now. That is the new French identity. It is an old debate between the two Frances: one for constant revolution, one for tradition.

Up until recently the two ideas of the nation had learned to live together, with a political swing from left to right every few years, just to keep the philosophical clock ticking. Most French people have always been traditionally-minded in all sorts of ways, and viewed politicans and the whole business of government with mistrust and some scorn. The real business of life was lived in families and communities just as it always had been, with attachment to tradition going hand in hand with organic change.

Political correctness, however, has come to mean that the views of the HOMMEN will soon have no droit de cité. They will have just have to shut up and be quiet, or radicalise. And there are as many of them around as there are disoriented, jobless Moslem boys in the inner cities ...

Inclusivity has long been a concern of the whole political class here, especially the left. Now they have screwed up big time. If they can manage to marginalise a whole generation of the best brought-up, best educated and most idealistic of their young people they are storing up trouble for the future.

Who knows what kind of meltdown will happen when there are more people on the margins than in the centre? It is likely to happen sooner than our rulers think.

And, just in case you thought these gentlemen were unthinking yobs ... they even quote Kipling :